DRUGS

This sort of moment comes along very rarely, but today my views on a subject happened to be aligned with those of the current UK government. That subject was 'legal highs'. In the Queen's Speech (somehow even less interesting than The King's Speech) it was announced that there would be a blanket ban on all 'legal highs'. Let's get one thing perfectly clear: I support the banning of 'legal highs'. I support the shift in legislation regarding 'legal highs' away from attempting to ban individual products towards a blanket ban on any and all of them. Allow me to explain why...

'Legal highs' are extremely fucking dangerous. Not like you might have a bad trip dangerous, but like might kill you or leave you with permanent organ damage dangerous. Properly fucking dangerous. They are dangerous because they are untested and unregulated. They are unregulated because they are sold as not fit for human consumption. It is in the best interests of the public at large that such substances are banned from sale.

But it won't work. And even if it did work to some extent, it will not address the problem. And addressing the problem wouldn't work if politicians tried to do that (which they won't) because it's actually not a problem at all. Thinking of it as a problem is the real problem. But we're not even looking at the first one yet, so...we're screwed basically. Allow me to elaborate. Human beings have been taking drugs for tens of thousands of years. We've been taking drugs since before religion. We've been taking drugs since before commerce. Way before agriculture. Yep, all the way back there in the darkest recesses of human history...can you see it? Yep, it's a guy gettin' high.

FACT #1: We take drugs because drugs work! 

The human brain is an incredibly complex network and the communication within that network is done by neurotransmitters. They are chemicals that fit into neuroreceptors and make brain do thing. It's complicated and this is not the time for a biology lesson (and I'm not a biology teacher) but what you need to know is that drugs work by mimicking neurotransmitters and fitting themselves into the receptors thereby giving us the effect of the neurotransmitter without having to go through the normal procedure to get it. For example, heroin works because we already make a painkiller in our brain (some gland or something) that is way more powerful than any plant-based opiate. Opiates work because they have the same bits as our own stuff. It's just that to get our own stuff we have to be in a huge amount of pain. You can take heroin when you're not in pain, and it is, by all accounts, great. Same goes for cocaine, same goes for weed...

FACT #2: We will always take drugs! 

You cannot stop people from doing something that they want to do. You make murder illegal, that's fine, most people don't want to murder anyway. And you know what? The people who really do want to murder, they do it anyway. Most of them seem to get caught, but they've already done their murder. Whether you lock them up or kill them, they've still done their murder. Aside from retroactive punishment, the criminal law is totally useless. People commit crimes all the fucking time. Some are more serious than others. The overwhelming majority go unnoticed, let alone unpunished. I'm talking about the everyday 'crimes' that we all commit. You want to see everyday criminals, drive at 70mph on a British motorway. Fuck it, just drive around. You'll see plenty of shit that's both dangerous and illegal, and you'll see people getting away with it in their fucking millions. Cocaine is illegal, but does that stop people from taking it? No. If you popped out a gram of coke at a party and started chopping out a few lines, unless it was a particularly straight party (but those sort of people don't throw parties...), you will have people gladly relieving you of the drugs that you have generously supplied. Spark a joint, offer to pass it, someone else will almost always take it off you. I could go on, but I won't. The point I'm making is this: you murder someone and you're a murderer, you steal shit for a living and you're a thief; in theory, and by the letter of the law, if you pass a joint you're a drug dealer.

FACT #3: Drugs should be legal! 

If the powers that be had even a gram of pure common sense, then we wouldn't be in this mess. The law only functions as long as the majority of people don't want to break it. If too many people want to break it, then it ceases to be viable to punish them all. Somewhere, there is probably a formula for that... This is where unwritten laws, rules of thumb, if you like, come into it. The speed limit is 70, but you are unlikely to be done for speeding unless you're going above 80. Unless it's near the end of a quota period and the police are down on their fines targets in which case you'll get the book thrown at you (at an extra book-throwing cost) for doing 71... So, if the law doesn't make any difference to behaviour, then why should it matter that drugs are illegal? People are going to take them anyway and they're almost guaranteed to get by unnoticed by the law. Well, that's where the 'legal high' rears its ugly head once again. And it brings us nicely round to that real problem that we were talking about earlier. People take 'legal highs' because they want to get high. They want to get high, but are afraid that if they buy an eighth of weed then they'll get kicked out of uni, sent to prison and their life will be ruined forever. So they go onto some dodgy as fuck website and order some synthetic cannabis substitute that, while officially not fit for human consumption, will get them high without the inherent and implied risks of illegal cannabis.

The fact that otherwise intelligent people will ingest a substance that is not fit for human consumption in order to get high should be a massive fucking hint that people are going to get high regardless of the risk factors attached to the process. Drugs should be legal because making them illegal does not work on any level in terms of reducing the number of people who take them. It just makes them more dangerous. It makes the whole process more dangerous. But here's the other thing, as dangerous as those 'legal highs' were that those students at Lancaster Uni took, they all survived. And for every one of the drug-related admissions to English A&E departments that day, how many alcohol-related admissions were there? My guess would be into the hundreds. I'm not going to get into the hypocrisy of having legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco and at the same time making weed illegal when it's less harmful to society than the former and to the individual than the latter... Because we all know that story backwards and forwards. We need to ban 'legal highs' because they are staggeringly dangerous, but we also need to de-criminalise recreational use of the real thing. If we did that, then our society would be safer and happier. Our police force would be unburdened of the responsibility of having to in some way wage an unwinnable war.

But what am I saying? That's never going to happen. It won't happen because none of our elected officials want it to happen. It won't happen because no one will ever run for parliament on a message of drug legalisation. That won't happen because they wouldn't get in if they did. So we're stuck with a government whose policies in no way reflect our wishes. That's democracy.

Formula 1 Rethink

Apparently, according to Seb Vettel, Formula 1 needs to 'bring back the fear factor'...

Ok, Seb, might I venture a few suggestions on that front? The last time someone died in Formula 1 was 1994. Ayrton Senna at the San Marion Grands Prix. Tragedy. Everyone (well, more or less everyone) in the world remembers, or at least knows, the name Ayrton Senna. They know that he was a racing driver and they know that he died. Roland Ratzenburger was also a racing driver and he also died at the 1994 San Marino Grands Prix. No one really outside of Formula 1 remembers his name. No documentary entitled Ratzenburger ever won the award for best documentary at Sundance. Roland Ratzenburger had, by all accounts, a bright future ahead of him. I'm not sure what point I'm making here, it's late and I'm tired, but I think there is a hypocrisy here. In fact I'm sure there is.

It's been 21 years since the last time a Formula 1 racing driver died during a Grands Prix. Apparently, that is how long it takes for people in the sport to start wanting the death back. There is a fantastic documentary about the dark days of F1 featuring lots of interviews with drivers and crew who had worked in the sport during the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and they all had vivid and upsetting accounts of watching friends and loved ones die - sometimes in truly horrific ways - more or less every week. Between 1953 and 1994, fifty drivers died in Formula 1.Ok, so I'll grant you, I don't think Vettel was talking directly about death. He was talking about the fear of death. But you can't have smoke without fire.

There is no denying that F1 is in a bad way at the moment. It is less exciting now than it's ever been, so dull in fact that even the drivers are finding it tedious. And as someone else pointed out, if you're driving a 900hp racing car at 190mph and you're bored: something is badly wrong. Recently, and for the first time in my living memory, Formula 1 asked fans for their thoughts on how to improve the sport. This was patently ridiculous. A Bad Idea in the grand tradition of Bad Ideas but at least we can be assured that nothing will come of it. I think what we have to accept, and this is something that the presenters of Formula 1 on the BBC consistently refute at every available juncture, is that Formula 1 is dying and that we should pull the plug.

Formula 1 is a relic of the time before oil shortages and climate change. As a spectacle it is hideously vulgar. This weekend is the most vulgar spectacle of them all: the Monaco Grands Prix. It's not even a race. No one can overtake on the track because it's too narrow and twisty. It's boredom incarnate to watch and it's ultimately just a thinly veiled advertisement for tax evasion. Formula 1 insists (and it can insist because it's a company run by a single octogenarian) that it moves with the times, and yet Monaco will always have a Grands Prix. It follows fashion in one breath while ignoring it with the next. And, like any attempt by an 80 year old man to be fashionable, its flirtations with it are usually misguided and always unpleasant to watch. Take the hybrid engines that we now have (and are apparently stuck with). That was an attempt to more the sport forward, yet it has backfired. The sport is now vastly more expensive to participate in and, unless you can afford one of the good engines made my Mercedes, you don't have a hope in hell of getting near the front of a race. And even if you did, you'd still lose to the Mercedes team because they don't just have the best engine, but they have a better version of that engine and a better car around it. This, we are told, is the price of progress.

Formula 1, we are told, is the pinnacle of motorsport. It is the testing ground for technology that will improve road cars of the future. It is the point, way high up in the clouds, from which progress in all areas automotive trickles down. And, you know what? I'd be fine with that. An anything-goes technological battle royale. With mad experimentation happening all the time, it would be crazy, but vividly entertaining, I have no doubt. But that's not what F1 is. It is the pinnacle of motorsport as decided upon by an 80 year old man. There are rules (thousands upon thousands of rules) and they're all in place to try and make sure this artificial playground in the sky is as level as possible, while also making sure that Mercedes still win almost every race. There has to be a clear hierarchy to the level playingfield. Maybe something Orwellian would do here. All playingfields are equal, just some are more equal than others? But let's face facts here. The most inconsistent component to an F1 car isn't the silly tyres that are designed to be awesome, then ok and then terrible at precise intervals... no, it's the driver. Why not take the drivers out of the equation all together? Make it a battle between algorithms! Whoever has the best algorithm wins! You wouldn't even have to stage a race. You could just decide each on on a computer and announce the victor there and then.

The thing is, Formula 1 must decide what it wants to be. And it must not be allowed to decide on something that is inherently self-contradictory. It can either be the pinnacle of automotive technology, or a level playingfield for the world's best drivers. The hybrid tech makes no sense to me. It's so complex that a lot of the control has been taken away from the driver and handled by a computer that in 1980 would have filled a whole row of terraced houses but today would fit into a fag packet. This means the drivers are not as involved and it's less a test of their driving skill as it is their ability to communicate with a computer. I'm surprised it still has a steering wheel. It doesn't need one. It's not attached to anything. Some of them even look like iPads. This does not inspire the viewing public. But here's the thing: you can't go backwards. You can't get rid of the hybrid engine and replace it with a vastly less fuel efficient screaming V8. You can't replace the iPad with a steering wheel. Nor can you replace run-off areas with concrete walls, tyre-walls with metal... you just can't.

It is widely understood that the 1970s was the most dangerous decade in F1, in rallying it was the 1980s with the Group B death machine; in touring cars it was the 1990s. Now, all of those sports have been sanitised to varying degrees. Now, almost no one ever dies. Rallying still exists, and people even go to watch it. It's not on TV in any way that you can really watch it but in the 80s more people watched rallying than F1. Rally driving looks like a huge amount of fun and I would love to try it. Formula 1 doesn't. And I don't. Formula 1 could ditch the razzle dazzle of multi-million pound sponsorships and VIP motorhomes and £20m-odd a year for Lewis Hamilton and go back to its roots. People would still watch it. I personally preferred it when it was tobacco dollars that had their names on the back of F1 cars, but that's just how I was raised. Better Marlboro than Bank of Santander any day.

Last year, an all electric formula was introduced. There was a brief flurry of interest when it was announced, a bit more when it got going and then nothing. I assume it's still going on, but I don't know. I don't know, because no one cares. If it was up to me, I'd let F1 as we know it die. It surely will when Bernie Ecclestone shuffles off this mortal coil. But knowing our luck, the twat will live to be a hundred and fifty. Maybe he's immortal. Maybe someone should check.

Thoughts on the Future and Other Issues

I'm writing this today without access to the internet. I mean, my phone can access the internet, but only to tell me why my home broadband is down. Ok, so it's something of a first-world problem I'll grant you, but bear with me because I have somewhere to go with this. Also, I should note, I am not particularly angry but I don't have a blog called, “I'm in a thoughtful mood right now,” so this'll have to do.

Also, my internet is back. Hmm...to continue or to give up? Shakespeare would have known what to do, but then again he didn't have the distractions of the internet to contend with so it's really no surprise that he got so much stuff done.

My girlfriend recently introduced me to Netflix. I had long avoided this service for a reason that could best be characterised by an instinctive mistrust of it. A gut feeling if you will. And it's not a fear of the New. I have a smartphone now, and while I loath its presence it has come in handy more than a handful of times. No, it's not that. Now I would never personally admit to having illegally downloaded episodes of TV shows from file-sharing sites, but from what I understand it's more or less possible to watch any episode of any TV show from pretty much any era within a day of its release. It's possible to watch American shows that aren't on over here. It's possible to watch whole series that are no longer on the air. From what I understand, its benefits far outweigh its drawbacks. Netflix, on some level, promises to be something in between 'real TV' and illegal file-sharing. You can watch what they have on their service, and you can watch it immediately and without commercials. This last part is absolutely key to why I don't own a television. I hate commercials. Or adverts, as they ought to be known. For some reason I've lapsed into speaking, or at least writing, in American. I'm also splitting my infinitives, but that's a game of 'spot the poor grammar' that we can save for later.

So what's my problem? Why can't I get on board with Netflix? Well problem the first is that I do not like the user interface, or UI as I believe it is known. I don't like how items are bunched together in groups that I have to navigate through. I don't like scrolling through endless lists of things when I have no idea what is even on the list. If I don't know what I'm looking for, I'm almost certainly not going to find it like that. If you search for something that you know you want, then there arises the problem that I have with looking through someone's iPod at a party. They've plugged it into the speakers because they think their taste in music is superior, but they don't have anything I like and when I do find an artist that I like they only have one track because it's from some bullshit compilation, or worse, a mix album. Netflix is like that guy (almost always a guy). Also, I haven't been to a party in a long time.

Now, I believe that something like Netflix is almost certainly the Future of Television. People are already used to on-demand services and fewer and fewer of us are watching TV as it is aired. We like to save up a whole season and 'binge-watch' it. We've even been warned about how, much as with the other types of binge (drink, drugs, etc), this could be bad for us. But the trend shows no sign of abating. But the problem is that Netflix does not have most of my shows. And nor will it any time soon. And there arises a further problem once we unpack why this might be. We come back to commercials. Ad money pays for TV shows. Apart from the BBC which is publicly funded, at least for the time being, and networks in America such as HBO and Showtime which are funded by subscription. HBO won't let Netflix have their shows because they already have an on-demand service (that we can't watch in the UK) that is part of their subscription package. Lose that, lose their subscribers; lose them, no more HBO. And no more HBO would mean no more GoT. So no, let's not go there.

And what of commercials? Netflix does not interrupt its shows with five minutes of mind-numbing ads every ten minutes (have you seen TV in America? It's fucking insane!) so there is no ad revenue to be gained from it. Netflix makes its own shows now, too, but not enough for it to really qualify as a network and since people binge-watch its shows, any exposure of advertised product would be utterly impossible to quantify. You have a 24-episode season of a popular show on a mainstream network and you get, in an hour of TV, fifteen minutes of ad time. That's the same hour, every week. You can target your ads to key demographics because people know who watches what. Ad agencies have that information so they can buy the right slots for the right advertisers and everyone is happy. People who watch daytime TV get to find out about new brands of adult nappies or how to turn their gold into cash; children get to find out about new accessories for their toys, and everyone (by which I mean no-one) is happy.

So, how does this fit into Netflix and the Future of Television? I don't know. It's a fucking doozie. TV networks are beholden to their advertisers, so they need to keep people watching at the correct times on the correct days of the week. As it stands, this is the only way for advertisers to flog their wares to the target demographics. It wouldn't work on Netflix because there are no ads on Netflix. As soon as they start putting ads in Netflix, people will stop watching or subscribe to ever increasing levels of 'Premium' in order to avoid them. So Netflix is not the answer, because it's ultimately more like a subscription service, a la HBO, than it is anything else. And what of illegal downloading? Will Netflix make this a thing of the past? Unlikely. I'm sure it's swayed a few people away, lured them with House of Cards and other such fancies, but it lacks the extensive back-catalogue and the go-anywhere reach of the file-sharing sites. And file-sharing doesn't impact on advertisers because their shows go out, laden with ads, every week as normal. Consequently, file-sharing doesn't really impact on TV networks either. They can still churn out their derivative crap week after week, year after year because people who wear adult nappies don't know what a Pirate Bay is and wouldn't know what to do with it if they did. They're too worried about whether they just shat themselves or not. HBO's not worried, because they can probably see the big picture. If you follow illegal downloading to its natural conclusion, then everybody downloads illegally which means no one watches HBO. No one subscribes, they have no money; they have no money, there's not GoT. So illegal downloading isn't the answer either because it results in a paradox that will destroy us all and everything we love.

So what is the future of television? Notice how I removed the caps? I don't know. So the best advice I can give is from a piece of grafiti that I saw once:

Stop watching, start living.

Cyclists

As of now, this moment, right here, let it be known that I am declaring it: OPEN SEASON on CYCLISTS.

...and here's why: I have reached my limit on the sheer number of total cunts who have in some way pissed me off with their discourteous attitude to their fellow road users. I have fucking news for you, asshole, THE HIGHWAY CODE APPLIES TO YOU, TOO! The Highway Code applies to cyclists. I'll tell you what, why don't I break it down for you? Why don't I give you a list? Some selected highlights from the past year, perhaps? And you can tell me, after you've taken this into consideration, whether or not you think I'm wrong to take up arms against this menace.

1 - ON THE ROAD

So last Winter, I think it was this year so either January or February, I had cause to stop by the Co-op on Great Western Road on my way somewhere. It was the evening, so it was dark, and it was raining quite heavily. I got into my car and prepared to join the flow of traffic. There was rain on my driver's side window. There was rain on my wingmirror. There was condensation on my rear view mirror. It was fucking unpleasant. I had my lights on and I was indicating right as a warning to traffic that I was intending to pull out. A break in the traffic. Wing mirror: checked, for all the good it was. Blind spot: checked, again for what good it did me. So as I am pulling out, by some quirk of good fortune, I look back over my shoulder again. In that split second I see a person on a bicycle. No lights, no helmet, ignoring the fact that I was pulling out, oblivious to the danger inherant in their approach to road safety. I managed to stop in time. They kept going as if nothing had happened. The car infront of mine also attempted to pull out and the same thing happened. The cyclist did not even slow down. No lights, no helmet, no regard whatsoever for their own safety or that of other road users.

More recently, once again on Great Western Road. It was night-time again and this time I was turning from Great Western Road onto Belmont Street. The road was wet and shimmering, but it was not raining. The traffic broke and I started to turn onto Belmont Street from the feeder lane. As I was almost through the junction, a man on a bicycle crossed my path. No lights. No helmet. Riding on the pavement along Great Western Road, crossing Belmont Street, without slowing down to look. Had he slowed down he would have seen a car, already turning into the street. Headlights on, indicator signaling intent. But he didn't. He didn't look. He just kept on going, regardless of the consequences.

More recently still, once again on Great Western Road. This was the other day. Early evening; it was still light. No rain. Driving up the road heading west, beyond Byres Road/Queen Margaret Drive, alongside the Botanic Gardens. I was in the lane nearest the pavement with traffic in both lanes moving freely. I passed a woman cycling on the road. No helmet. I gave her the proper distance when passing and went on my way. At the next cross-street, I was stopped at the lights. There was a queue of maybe two or three cars ahead of me, cars signalling to turn right were queued in the centre lane. The woman on the bike emerges, cycling at a leisurely pace up the middle of the two lines of cars. As she was about level with my window, the lights turned green and we began to move off. I had assumed that her intention was to turn right as she had moved to the centre of the road. However, as we moved off she carried on straight and by this point was veering in front of me, moving back over to her correct position on the road. The courteous driver that I am, I waited patiently for her to return to the side and then passed her once more, again leaving the proper distance. At the next set of lights, I observed in my mirror, she repeated the manoever. Fortunately for me, this time the nightmare remained behind me and I did not have to go through the ordeal of dealing with this moron for a third time.

2 - Parks and footpaths

As I'm sure many of you know, every day Sara and I walk our dog on the Kelvin Walkway. We are but two of innumerable dog owners who use this area of park land to exercise our beloved dogs. Every single day, every time we walk there, we are confronted by a seemingly endless stream of cyclists who also use the walkway to get to and from work, or merely for leisure purposes. A sign at the entrance to the Kelvin Walkway clearly states that the speed limit for vehicles - including cyclists - is 5mph. FIVE MILES PER HOUR. Five. Now, I hear what you're saying: "five miles an hour is ludicrously slow". "That's barely faster than walking pace". "If I wanted to travel that slow, I'd just fucking walk"...

AND THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT! 

The Kelvin Walkway is not a cycle path. It is a 'mixed use footpath'. Now, here's the deal. I don't give a shit how fast you ride your bike along the Kelvin Walkway, just as long as you slow the fuck down when you're riding past people with dogs and, I don't know, small children. All I ask is that you treat us with a tiny bit of common fucking courtesy. And you know what? Some of them do. You see, when I see a cyclist approaching and I'm out with Ciara, I bring her close to heel and have her sit in front of me, usually focussed on a treat. After they're all passed, she gets the treat and we move on. And in, I would say, 10% of those instances, we receive some kind of gesture of acknowledgement from the passing cyclist that we have INCONVENIENCED OURSELVES FOR THEIR BENEFIT. In the other 90% of instances, we receive no such acknowledgement. No nod. No thank you. No much obliged. Not the faintest hint of recognition. And you know what? I don't even care about that. I'm fine with that. Just don't run over my dog. Don't you mother fucking dare even come close to running over my dog. Because when I'm down there and you're whizzing by at 10, 15, 20mph and you don't slow down when you go past me and you don't offer up a glimmer of acknowledgement that I stopped MY WALK so that you could carry on about your day... if you so much as ruffle a hair on my dog's back I will kill you. That is how stressful you fucking people make it down there. I can't tell you how many dogs I personally know that have been hit or run over by cyclists on the Kelvin Walkway. We treat you with courtesy and respect, and you throw it back in our faces.

Which brings me to today. To this morning. To the reason why I'm so fucking angry at cyclists right now. Today, Glasgow Uni organised a charity bike ride. Don't feel bad if you missed it, the signs they put up were smaller than A4 size and they afixed them at knee height to one signpost. Here's a tip: there's a reason why signs are posted higher up... IT'S SO PEOPLE WILL FUCKING SEE THEM! Glasgow University, the brains trust, Russell Group, centre for excellence in research and teaching... Glasgow fucking Uni put signs up at knee-high. Those stupid mother fuckers. So today, on my morning walk with the dog, I had to contend not with one or two cyclists, but with a whole sodding peloton streaming down a MIXED-USE PUBLIC FOOTPATH with no warning that they would be there and with no supervision to make sure that they obeyed the rules of the path that they were using. Don't worry. I got a contact email, address and phone number for the person responsible for organising this and they are next on my contact list. I just had to vent a little bit first. Of the vast number of cyclists who rode past me today,  would say their average speed was about 15mph. One guy on a racing bike rode past us at nearly 30. And when I asked the volunteer what measures they were taking to ensure the safety of the other users - both canine and human - she said that the riders had been told of the speed limit. And then she pointed to the sign. Knee-high on a signpost. Nigh on invisible in a light green against the grass in the background. Text compressed onto a sheet smaller than A4. That was the sign to warn ME that THEY were going to using OUR footpath that day. I was also told that there were police along the route who were there to make sure the riders stuck to the speed limit. There were no fucking police.

Fact is, cyclists already treat the Kelvin Walkway like it's their own personal velodrome. Today, it's like they had official confirmation that the sole right of way was theirs and damn the consequences. I counted about fifteen dogs while I was out and a greater number of small children. Both dogs and small children have two things in common: they're unpredicable at times, and they don't understand the concept of a bicycle travelling towards them silently and unrelentingly at nigh on 30mph. They don't have the first clue what that might mean. So I put it to you, dear, dear readers of my blog: Am I Wrong? Because I've got half a mind to go down there with a radar gun and a baseball bat and anyone I catch speeding on a bicycle - I won't even enforce the 5mph, I'll give them 10... - I will cave their fucking skull in. Fair deal? I fucking think so.

Ten ways to live longer or die trying...

Look at Bruce Willis. Or should I say John McClane? Look at that poor fool, he just keeps on living. They're making him do another Die Hard film. A sixth Die Hard film. What the fuck is that about? If John McClane were a real person and he read the Guardian, I'm sure he would have read with some interest the article with which I became disgruntled earlier on today. Ten ways to live longer... He would have asked, at least in my mind he would have asked, where is the companion piece, 'Ten ways to die?'

But I'll come back to that train of thought later on. Firstly, what pissed me off so much about the original piece? Was it how eye-meltingly obvious many of the points were? No. That was to be expected. It was actually how monumentally offensive the overall tone of the piece ended up being. Basically, and I'm summarising here, if you want to live to a grand old age first of all don't live in Britain. Don't have had the misfortune to have been born here and if you did, at least have had the benefit of being raised elsewhere. If you do insist upon being British and living your paltry life here, don't live outside London. Don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat fatty food. Exercise. Etc. Etc. Also don't be stressed. Don't be stressed about the fact that you work too hard in a job that pays peanuts, or worse, that you're currently unemployed at perhaps the worst moment to be so in living memory.

Don't live in the North. Don't be from the North. Exercise. Eat nuts and seeds. Eat nuts and seeds like a bird. You fucking bird. You unemployed London bird. You fucking pigeon. Move to Japan. It's fucking great in Japan. Everyone's old. And happy, everyone's happy in Japan. And Spain. Fucking Spain. It's great, they have olive oil and tapas and it's sunny and people sleep during the day. Go to Spain. Fuck off to Spain. Who is this advice even for? What was the point? Why waste that paper on this crap. Maybe it will be ironically used to wrap up a fish supper.

There exists a tiny number of people who are not already either following all of that advice and, consequently, do not need it, or are too far gone down the road of being Northern or eating chips, drinking beer and smoking fags. They exist. Honest. But they're probably too busy having opportunities to stop and read some guff in the Guardian. So, I conclude, it was for me. It was a warning. I need to stop and think about how I'm living my life. I need to quit smoking and do more exercise. I need to eat less fatty food and eat more nuts and seeds. I need to move to Japan. Or Spain. Or London. Either way, I need to move South. I need to run to the train station and get on any train going South and not get off until I'm living ten years longer.

Oh fuck. Oh fucking hell. Wait a minute here. If I'm going to live ten years longer, I'm going to have to start planning for my retirement. Or am I? If this was twenty years ago, forty years ago, whatever, and I was planning to live to 70+, I would need to plan for my retirement. But this is now, and I'm probably going to have to work until I die, even if I live to 70. So what is the fucking point? The only good thing about living longer is the possibility of taking it easy, moving to the country, enjoying grandchildren occasionally coming to visit in the Summer holidays. But I won't have that. I'll be in a cubicle, nine to five, trying to do data entry with arthritis. Trying to remember the name of my boss who's thirty years younger than me. Trying to remember where it all went wrong.

You know where it all went wrong? I gave up smoking. I ate healthier even though it made me a twat. I exercised even though everyone looks stupid when they exercise. I even moved to Japan for a while, but had to leave because everyone was speaking Japanese. I lived in Spain, but had to leave because it's shit. It's nice for a holiday, but overall, it's shit. Tapas is shit. It's too hot and it's just shit. So I moved to London. You know what happens in London? Industrialised misery. Twelve million of the angriest twats you'll ever meet all crammed into a space that most dormice would find a bit too cosy. And they're all competing with eachother for housing, jobs, food, mates. It's like living in a really badly thought out zoo.

So I ended up back in Britain. Back up North. Working til I die. I have no friends because I had to give up everything that made me a likeable human being. I became an absolute ball-acheing twat and for what? The joy of working an extra few years in some (literally) dead-end job. Fuck you Guardian. I'll take my fags and my beer and my food. I'll enjoy the years I actually have. I'm not going to mortgage the best years of my life so that the worst years can last a bit longer.

On the future of the Halt Bar...

My attention was grabbed today by an online petition to save the Halt Bar on Woodlands Road (as if you didn't know where it is...). I was unaware, prior to this, that the Halt was under threat in any way. But the more I have thought about the situation, the angrier I have become.

The thought of turning an existing pub into a 'gastro-pub' is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. Some pubs should serve food. That should be an option open to patrons. I do not object to the concept of a 'gastro-pub'. What I do object to, however, is turning a good pub into a 'gastro-pub'. Allow me to illustrate with a comparison between the Hogshead/Primary/Old Schoolhouse and Uisge Beatha/Dram!

When I first came to Glasgow, the Hogshead was a generic food-pub option that was handy if not particularly memorable. If you were hungry, but wanted a pint also, it was good to have that option available. The place had no real distinctive character, the interior is spacious and the atmosphere is pretty much non-existent. That's fine. In its various subsequent incarnations, the overall vibe of the place hasn't changed. I would not miss it if it closed tomorrow. I can't imagine many people shedding a tear over its passing.

Uisge Beatha on the other hand, instantly became one of my favourite places to go drinking in Glasgow and retained its place in my top-five for all the time I lived here until it underwent its recent evolution from pub to 'gastro-pub'. I remember walking home from town having done some Christmas shopping and I saw the 'new' Uisge Beatha and I was almost overcome with revulsion. I went inside to see if it could possibly be as bad as it looked and it was a thousand times worse. A man outside, a patron, who appeared to be American was loudly extolling the virtues of this place for all to hear. I was sickened by his display. The list of things wrong with Dram! is substantial and it's far from necessary to go into it in depth here. Suffice to say, they turned a real pub with real character into a faceless, homogenised, corporate shadow of its former self. Like when a good friend joins a cult, it's a sad, sad time.

What bothers me more than anything about this shift away from real pubs is how short-sighted it is. Yes, 'gastro-pubs' are in at the moment. People who work in marketing will tell you that it's easier to make more money running one of these enterprises than it is a traditional pub. I will tell those marketing types to FUCK OFF. I will urge like-minded people, right-thinking people, to also tell them to FUCK OFF. If I want to eat and drink in the same place I'll go to any one of the hundreds of existing establishments already dotted around the West-end. If I want to share my drinking space with a shower of arseholes, I'm sure I can find a place (Dram!) where I can do that too. But soon, the marketing types will realise, once all the pubs are 'gastro' that some people want to just go to a cool place and drink. And then they'll realise that it's a hell of a lot easier to put the 'gastro' into a pub than it is to take it out and we'll all be fucked.

Make a stand now, or say goodbye to real pubs. It's as simple as that.

Panic on the streets of London...

I read in the fashion section of the G2 the other day that polka dots are back in. It seems, much like the Pale Horse, the polka dot brings with it hell, or at least the 1980s. Maybe these two events are unrelated.

Ok, so London. Riots. We've been here before. Let's examine the evidence.

1 - Tory government? Check.
2 - Economic recession? Check.
3 - Polka dots? Check.
4 - Need I go on?

Ok, so it seems we're back at this old chestnut. People have no confidence in their government. The vast majority of people are facing up to a future that is at best uncertain and at worst really fucking bleak. Unemployment is severe, we are in a recession, and the message is austerity. Add to that a Metropolitan Police Force that, in addition to several very public fuck-ups and a poor track record for handling protest both peaceful and otherwise, has recently been implicated at the heart of a massive corruption case regarding our old friends at the News of the World, and we have a cocktail most potent.

So who is Mark Duggan? Gangster or peace-loving father of four? Both? Neither? Well, he's dead. Did he shoot first? Hard to tell. Things seem to hinge on this mysterious bullet that was lodged in a police car radio. Early investigations, reported in the Guardian, suggest that the bullet is police issue. Oh dear. But he had a gun right? He shot first? For the sake of the credibility of the Met, I hope so. But I don't really. I'm not a fan of the trigger-happy keystone cops operation that seems to be running out of Scotland Yard these days. They shoot innocent people. They beat up innocent people to the point of near death. They get away with it. They sell information to News International. No, I don't like the Met. But no one can deny, it's been a pretty bad few years for them.

Who else? Well pretty much everybody is on holiday. The prime minister is on holiday, the home secretary is on holiday and the mayor of London, the quite incomprehensible Boris Johnson, is on holiday... You'd think the people of London would at least wait until everyone was home from their vacations before starting the party, but no. Theresa May is coming home. The other two, it looks like, are staying away. Who can blame them? Perhaps the most alarming piece of soundbitery that has been shat out during this whole ordeal is that the mayor of London was advised to stay away, lest his return send the message that the rioters have won. I might not have all rhe details here, but I'm pretty sure that this is not just a "we miss Boris" riot, or a "come home Boris" riot, or even a "let's ruin Boris's holiday" riot...this is a proper riot. Fuelled by tension, heated by mistrust of the authorities and who knows, maybe that mistrust is entirely justified.

I think people are angry. I believe that their anger may well be justified. I do not think that these events are indicative, as members of the government have suggested, of base criminality. I think that it would be a grave mistake to dismiss them as such. People are angry, I say burn the whole stinking metropolis to the ground starting with New Scotland Yard.